As an artist I suppose it obvious that we struggle with fear.
Will this painting turn out?
Am I being true to myself and who I am as an artist?
Am I wandering away from my style?
Is this the best way to represent this subject? idea? concept?
Am I too influenced by another artist?
What will others think?
When I am doing expressive art I feel more free and paint to express a concept. I create rather rapidly and really stop thinking and just respond to materials and any idea that comes to mind. I paint over, paint out, scribble, add collage, more layers and just keep going until it feels more or less finished. Then I stop.
In most cases I have lost track of time.
I might have gotten out more canvases. I may start on several paintings at once, then develop them one at a time. Or move back and forth for drying time, or to give myself a little breathing space for seeing if that last bit is a go or a paint over moment.
Reflections on painting more realisticly
Not much of that happened as I worked through the series of calla lily paintings. For some reason it actually felt strange, as if I was revisiting a place I had left behind. Yet all the skills were there (more or less) with some new things that got added in out of desperation to be true to what I was seeing.
For some reason, I felt that I had lost some of the intensity I feel when creating a piece that is concept driven. Maybe intensity is not really what I mean because I was driven to keep recording the growth of that bud into a flower. I approached them as exercises.
Perhaps it has more to do with abandon. Painting to express a concept or a truth or a question does not involve seeing with my eyes, but feeling what my heart wants to show, or even what I feel God wanting me to show with color, texture and mark-making.
While painting the calla lilies, I was observing the growth, change and withering of the life of a calla lily. I could see changes every day.
When I paint about ideas or representations of what I feel to be truth, I rely on the hope that if I get the marks color and energy right, viewers will feel something. This is painting—or trying to—paint what is UNseen.
It took me a long time to learn to be comfortable with abstraction and expressionism, but I love it. So I was really shocked at how invested I got in making portraits of flowers. I feared a setback or that I would be stuck in another category of painting.
I guess I can be both. Working on a kind of scale of reality: more expressive when appropriate or more realistic when needed.
It’s all part of creative practice after all.
